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Political Economy and Service Delivery

Work in progress on the political economy of service delivery studies the theory and evidence on the role of institutions, information, credibility of political promises, and social polarization in shaping political incentives to serve the poor.

Much of the variation in delivering broad public services and alleviating poverty can be attributed to the way public resources are allocated by politicians. Even in developing democratic countries, where politicians depend upon the poor for political support, public expenditures often fail to deliver basic services to the poor. In many cases political agents have incentives to misallocate public resources to either private rents or inefficient transfers that benefit a few citizens at the expense of many.

The misallocation of public resources can be traced to imperfections in political markets (lack of information about service quality, lack of credibility of political promises, and polarization of voters on social and ideological grounds) that do not allow the poor to hold governments accountable for their actions. In addition to political market imperfections, institutional factors (constitutional rules, electoral regimes, and party systems) produce complex outcomes. Understanding the conditions and institutions under which political market imperfections grow or shrivel is therefore critical to empowering the poor to extract better performance from their governments.

Articles & Briefs

Democracy by Other Means? Legalizing Demand for Social and Economic Rights in the Developing WorldResearch Brief 2007

In Quest of Institutions that Promote Fiscal Discipline Research Brief 2006

This project evaluates the impact of innovative dissimenation strategies to inform citizens about the quality of public services and to encourage public action and political pressure for improved service delivery (India, Pakistan).

Findings

Governance in the Gullies: Democratic Responsiveness and Leadership in Delhi's Slums, S. Jha, V. Rao and M. Woolcock, World Development (forthcoming). (Based on Policy Research Working Paper 3694)

The inability of political competitors to make credible promises to citizens can severely distort public policy. For example, an overemphasis on the providing public goods to specific groups and an underemphasis on the quality of broad public good provision. This project explores this theoretically and uses the resulting insights to explain the sharply different performance characteristics of younger and older democracies.

Findings

Democracy, Public Expenditures, and the Poor, S. Khemani and P. Philip Keefer, World Bank Research Observer, 20 (Spring):1-27, 2005. (Based onPolicy Research Working Paper3164).

This project examines the justicability, enforcement, politics, and impact of litigation related to the rights to education and health care in five developing countries: Brazil, India, Indonesia, Nigeria, and South Africa. The research project examines the conditions under which social and economic rights (SE) litigation goes forward, courts rule in favor of SE litigants, bureaucracies enforce courts' SE judgments, and SE cases affect generalized social policies.

Conferences

October 27, 2006 - Social and Economic Rights: What Difference Do They Make?Agendahere, Webcast here.

Findings

Social Rights and Economics: Claims to Health Care and Education in Developing Countries, V. Gauri, World Development 32(3): 465-477, 2004. Full text

Boundary Institutions and HIV/AIDS Policy in Brazil and South Africa, V. Guari and E. S. Lieberman, Studies in Comparative International Development 41 (3): 47-73, 2006.

This project studies how political institutions and electoral rules shape fiscal policies, public spending programs, and service delivery. Some evidence is available on the relative impact of fiscal rules and politically motivated discretion on fiscal policies of state governments in India. The main conclusion of this part of the study is that while political institutions significantly influence fiscal decisions, and often in counter-intuitive ways, delegation of some policies to an independent agency makes a difference in curbing political control and promoting equity.

Findings

Does Delegation of Fiscal Policy to an Independent Agency Make a Difference? Evidence from Intergovernmental Transfers in India, S. Khemani, Journal of Development Economics 82(2): 464-84, 2007.

This project addresses the issue of decentralization from an explicit political economy perspective by asking the following questions: Do locally elected governments have better incentives for service delivery? What particular features of political institutions under decentralization changes incentives for service delivery?

Policy Research Working Papers on Health(Please use the freeAdobe Acrobat Reader to viewPDF files)The following policy research working papers are drawn from the World Bank's institutional archives. Each link opens a page with an abstract of the document and several download options.